Page:Comin' Thro' the Rye (1898).djvu/80

72 they? Followers? Not one or two or three but dozens! Oh, Alice, Alice! do I not know well enough what will happen? In five minutes the governor will come in from the garden at the back of the house, and sit down to supper (his seat faces the road and the hedge to the left of the rose garden), he will see them—he will rush out—and here conjecture fails me.

Jack enters, bearing the cider. "Jack!" I cry, rushing at him, "they have come, they are here, dozens of them!"

"Beetles?" asks Jack abstractedly, his thoughts plainly running on the crab who is waiting to have his body dissected.

"Lovers!" I say, shaking him by he arm, "oh! what shall we do?"

Jack goes to the window. Below we hear the scraping of chairs, the rattle of plates; the lamplight streams across the road; evidently Alice is in full view of the enamoured host, for there is a sudden movement in their ranks, and they increase their capers tenfold, much as you may see Chucky, the pig, curl his tail and grunt excitedly when he sees a delectable wash approaching.

"If they would only keep quiet," I say in despair, "perhaps he would not see them. Do you thingthink [sic] they know what a dreadful man he is?" Jack vanishes. A thought strikes me; seizing my nightcap, I lean out of the window and wave it energetically, pointing first to the room below, then at the town yonder. Surely, surely, my nightcap says, as plain as it can speak, "Go away?" Alas! to them such is evidently not its meaning, for at sight of my modest signal, at the dim vision of my white-robed form, the besieging army seems inspired with fresh vigour, and even begins to clamber over the hedge. My flag of danger is construed as an amatory signal pointing to indefinite favours, perhaps a love-letter. In another moment I hear a chair pushed sharply back below; the next I see the governor tearing across the road. He is up the hedge and over it before you could say Jack Robin-